Digital Earth Australia Coastlines is a continental dataset providing annual shorelines and rates of coastal change for the entire Australian coastline from 1988 to the present. It combines satellite data from Geoscience Australia's Digital Earth Australia program with tidal modelling to map the typical location of the coastline at mean sea level for each year. The dataset is provided by the Australian Ocean Data Network.
Use Cases
- Monitor and map rates of coastal erosion along the Australian coastline based on annual shoreline positions.
- Prioritize and evaluate the impacts of local and regional coastal management based on historical coastline change data.
- Model how coastlines respond to drivers of change, including extreme weather events, sea level rise or human development.
- Support geomorphological studies of how and why coastlines have changed across time.
Strengths
- Covers over 30,000 km of Australian coastline.
- Provides annual shoreline data from 1988 to the present, enabling multi-decadal trend analysis.
- Combines satellite data with tidal modelling to map coastline at mean sea level.
Limitations
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
- Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to data_gov_au, focusing solely on Australia.
Provenance
- Source
- Australian Ocean Data Network, utilizing Geoscience Australia's Digital Earth Australia program.
- Collection Method
- Combines satellite data with tidal modelling.
- Time Range
- 1988 to present
- Freshness
- Last updated 2026-06-23 02:09:58.576487; freshness should be verified.
- Geography
- Entire Australian coastline